In the latest issue of Nature – one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific journals in the West – almost half of the published studies featured work by ethnic Chinese researchers.
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Some researchers said the output reflected the rapid progress of China’s scientific work in recent years while others said more data was needed to determine if this was a trend.
Nature is a multidisciplinary publication founded in 1869 and based in London. On January 8, the weekly journal published 35 research papers, 17 of which had ethnic Chinese scientists as first or corresponding authors.
Among the papers, some were led by Chinese researchers working at overseas research institutes – such as Scripps Research and Ohio State University in the United States – and some were co-authored by Chinese scientists from domestic institutes and their international collaborators.
“This is not surprising,” said Deng Weiwei, a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen.
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He noted that Chinese researchers were now scattered across universities and research institutes worldwide, and articles by scientists from China’s top research institutes had appeared more frequently in top journals.